Coping with stress
Coping is a changing, situation-specific effort, in thought and action, to handle stressful demands.
Coping strategies (Endler and Parker)
- Task-oriented: get information about the problem, plan and act. Example: make a study plan.
- Emotion-oriented: manage feelings: stay hopeful, talk it out, or sometimes vent anger or blame oneself.
- Avoidance-oriented: deny or play down the problem, or escape into other activities.
Lazarus and Folkman
- Problem-focused coping: change the stressful situation itself.
- Emotion-focused coping: change how we feel about it.
Task and problem-focused coping usually work best when something can be done. Avoidance may help for a short time but not in the long run.
Stress management techniques
- Relaxation techniques: slow deep breathing and relaxing muscles one by one, from feet to head. They lower heart rate and tension.
- Meditation: focusing attention on one thing (breath, a word) to calm the mind. Yoga and pranayama are Indian practices.
- Biofeedback: a machine shows body signals like heart rate or muscle tension so a person learns to control them.
- Creative visualisation: picturing a calm scene or picturing yourself succeeding.
- Cognitive behavioural techniques: changing negative thoughts. Stress inoculation training (Meichenbaum) replaces negative self-talk with positive, coping self-talk, in three phases: assessment, stress reduction techniques and application.
- Exercise: swimming, walking, running or dancing reduce stress hormones and improve mood.
Life skills for meeting life's challenges
Life skills are abilities for positive, adaptive behaviour that help us deal with daily demands (WHO).
- Assertiveness: saying clearly and politely what you feel or need; being able to say "no".
- Time management: planning, setting priorities, and doing first things first.
- Rational thinking: challenging distorted thoughts, removing negative self-talk.
- Improving relationships: listening, expressing feelings, accepting others.
- Self-care: healthy sleep, food, breathing and rest.
- Overcoming unhelpful habits: perfectionism (wanting everything perfect), avoidance (putting problems aside) and procrastination (delaying tasks).
Promoting positive health and well-being
Positive health is more than no illness: it is a healthy body, good relationships, a sense of purpose and resistance to stress. Stress resistant people have these factors:
- Diet: a balanced diet lifts mood and energy.
- Exercise: raises fitness and lowers stress.
- Positive attitude: seeing reality clearly and feeling able to manage it.
- Positive thinking: optimism, expecting good outcomes.
- Social support: help from others. Kinds: tangible (money, goods, services), informational (advice), emotional (love, care, understanding).
Hardiness and resilience
Hardiness (Kobasa) has three Cs: commitment (being involved in life), control (feeling one can influence events) and challenge (seeing change as a chance to grow). Resilience is the ability to bounce back after hardship.
Well-being means feeling satisfied, happy and purposeful in life.
Try it at home
Do the 4-4-6 breath for 3 minutes: breathe in for 4 counts, hold for 4, breathe out for 6. Before and after, count your pulse for 30 seconds. Most people find the pulse drops. You have just used a relaxation technique.
Key formulas and definitions
- Coping: effort in thought and action to handle stress
- Endler-Parker: task, emotion, avoidance-oriented
- Lazarus-Folkman: problem-focused vs emotion-focused
- Techniques: relaxation, meditation, biofeedback, visualisation, CBT, exercise
- Stress inoculation: negative self-talk → coping self-talk
- Life skills: assertiveness, time management, rational thinking, relationships, self-care, overcoming bad habits
- Positive health: diet, exercise, positive attitude, positive thinking, social support
- Hardiness = commitment + control + challenge
Worked examples
1. Ritu is worried about maths, so she makes a daily practice plan and asks her teacher for extra help. Which coping?
Task-oriented (problem-focused) coping: she acts directly on the problem.
2. After failing a test, Vikram keeps watching movies and says, "Marks do not matter." Which coping?
Avoidance-oriented coping: he plays down the problem and escapes into another activity.
3. A coach teaches a nervous player to replace "I will fail" with "I have practised; I can handle this." Name the technique.
Stress inoculation training, a cognitive behavioural technique that swaps negative self-talk for positive coping talk.
4. Priya's uncle pays her fees, her teacher advises her on colleges and her friend listens when she is sad. Name the kinds of social support.
Tangible (fees), informational (advice) and emotional (listening) support.
Common mistakes
- Thinking avoidance is always the best coping. It gives short relief but the problem stays.
- Believing assertiveness means being rude. It means expressing needs clearly and politely.
- Confusing hardiness's 3 Cs with GAS stages. Hardiness is commitment, control and challenge.
- Thinking positive health just means no disease. It includes good relations, purpose and stress resistance.